Asian stocks fall on US, China concerns

Agencies, with Staff writer

Sun, Nov 10, 2013 - Page 15

Asian stocks fell this week, with the benchmark measure capping its longest weekly losing streak since June, amid concern that the US Federal Reserve may soon decide that the US economy is strong enough to begin paring stimulus and as investors awaited a meeting of China’s leaders this weekend.

Samsung Electronics Co, which counts the US as its biggest sales market, dropped 6 percent for the week in Seoul, while Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd (中國工商銀行) fell 3.7 percent in Hong Kong ahead of the start of China’s leadership plenum yesterday.

Toyota Motor Corp, the world’s biggest carmaker, lost 2.1 percent after a profit forecast missed estimates, while Japan’s Coca-Cola West Co posted the MSCI Asia Pacific Index’s fifth-biggest gain of the week after net income surged.

Concord Securities analyst Kerry Huang said he suspected many foreign institutional investors cut their positions in market heavyweights, such as TSMC and Nan Ya Plastics Corp (南亞塑膠), after the plunge on Wall Street.

Bucking the downtrend of the broader market, Asia Pacific Telecom Co (亞太電信) rose 1.96 percent to end at NT$18.20 after MSCI Inc added the stock to the Taiwan index of the MSCI Global Standard Indices following a semi-annual index review.

However, MSCI cut Taiwan’s weighting in the MSCI All Country World Index, the MSCI All Country Asia Index — excluding Japan — and the MSCI Emerging Markets Index by 0.01 percentage points, 0.05 percentage points and 0.11 percentage points respectively.

“The weighting downgrade was widely expected. The local market is being largely dictated by the Fed factor for the moment,” Huang said.